


crossing lines

by DictionaryWrites



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Desperation, Five Stages of Grief, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Secret Marriage, Secret Relationship, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 04:04:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14926806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: When Loki finds out Fandral is dead after the events of Thor: Ragnarok, he is visibly distraught.





	crossing lines

**Author's Note:**

> Anonymous: Dashingfrost, where Thor only learns about Loki and Fandral's relationship after the events of Ragnarok?

The Ark is well on its way now, and Asgard’s ruin is fading into the distance behind them. Loki runs his hand through his hair, breathing heavily as he tips back against the wall. “I would spar,” Loki says, and Thor glances up, his lips parting.

“We just fought a battle for the ages,” Thor says. “You can’t  _truly_  wish to spar now?”

“Very well,” Loki says, a good-natured grin coming to his face. “If you won’t, someone else will. Where is Fandral? I missed him as he came aboard - I’ll seek him out instead.” A weight settles like a stone in Thor’s belly, and he stares at Loki’s face for a long few moments, trying to formulate his next few words.

“Loki,” Thor says quietly. “Fandral isn’t here.” Loki’s face freezes. His smile becomes ugly and sharp, unnaturally still on his features, and his eyes widen the slightest fraction, their blue depths  _wild_. “I thought you knew. When Hela attacked, t’was the Warriors Three that staved her off as everyone fled, and—”

Loki is already walking away. Thor gives chase as Loki runs sharp down the corridors, and he stops and stares as Loki skids to a stop in front of Heimdall in a wide hall, his hands resting desperately on the taller man’s chest, and—

There are tears in his brother’s eyes. That takes Thor aback.

“ _Please_ ,” Loki says desperately, his voice so uncannily sharp and high that it makes others turn to look at him, alarmed. Bruce and Brunnhilde stand together at the side of the room, confusion showing on their faces, but Loki doesn’t see anybody but Heimdall, his fingers fisting in Heimdall’s dark cloak. “Please, please, please, Heimdall,  _please_ —” Loki borders on hysterical, his grip so tight upon Heimdall’s cloak that it seems like it will tear, and Thor can see the way Heimdall’s face falls, his lips parting.

“My prince,” Heimdall starts, and Loki lets out a noise like he’s been  _punched_.

“Don’t  _call_  me that,” he snaps, trembling. “Don’t—  _Please_ , you can’t say— So many years on that  _awful_  planet and he can’t be—” Loki strikes at Heimdall’s chest, and Heimdall does not so much as flinch as Loki lays another blow against him: he lets Loki hit him a dozen times before he catches at Loki’s wrists, gripping his hands in Heimdall’s much larger ones, but Loki is already breaking down. Thor stares in horror as Loki goes limp in Heimdall’s arms, and Heimdall catches him before he can fall to his knees, carrying him with ease from the room.

Already, the Asgardians are looking to each other in bafflement and consternation, and Thor calls to the room, “My brother has been taken ill – a magical injury, and one Heimdall knows how to heal.” This seems to assail some of his people’s moods, but others still look even more suspicious, and Thor shifts from the room, following Heimdall’s path.

“What’s wrong with him?” Brunnhilde asks, falling into step beside him, and Thor shakes his head, uncertain. Loki had never cared for the Warriors Three in three thousand years – undoubtedly, he would fight alongside them, protect them even, but he had always made it clear that he considered each of them  _Thor’s_  friends, not his own. Thor’s grief burns in his chest, and he steps slowly into the room where Heimdall has taken Loki, an antechamber.

Loki is on his knees upon the ground, and the sounds that rip from his throat are so pathetically ragged that Thor feels nausea pool within him: desperately, he steps forward, needing to offer  _some_  sort of comfort, some sort of consolation, but Heimdall raises one palm, stopping him in his tracks. Thor obeys, staring down at Loki as he sobs against his hands, crying in a way Thor has  _never_  seen him.

And then, with a supernatural, unsettling suddenness, he stops.

Loki sits back on his heels, his teeth gritted together, and he states forward with a resolute expression on his face.

“No,” Heimdall says. “Loki, you cannot think you can fight her—”

“I’m not going to go to  _her_ ,” Loki whispers. He has a crazed look in his eye, one that Thor has seen before, and Thor stares at him as Loki rises. Seiðr swirls around his younger brother, thickening the air, and he hears Brunnhilde let out a short curse and take a step back. Thor stands face to face with his brother, and Loki stares Thor in the eye, but he doesn’t seem to see him. Tears shine on his cheeks, catching the light, and Thor’s gaze is caught by a glint upon his hand.

A ring? Since when has Loki worn rings?

“Get out of my way, Thor,” Loki says softly, his tone delicate. The words crackle on the air like incantations, imbued with a strange power that makes the lights flicker and the ship  _quake_  beneath them, and Thor slowly inhales. It isn’t in Loki’s nature to use his full power, isn’t in his nature to display his strengths, even to his own brother, but he gets the impression that Loki can’t  _control_  this.

“Where are you going?” Thor asks.

“Back to Sakaar.”

“Sakaar is  _gone_ ,” Brunnhilde says.

“But En Dwi isn’t.”

“En Dwi?” Thor repeats, and he looks to Brunnhilde, who has a genuine  _fear_  in her eyes.

“Lackey… I don’t know what you’re thinking here, but whatever you want, the Grandmaster won’t give it to you. Not after what you just did.” Loki laughs, the sound ugly, and sharp.

“Of course he will,” Loki whispers, his eyes glittering with a faraway shine, as if a million cogs are turning just behind his eyes. There’s an ethereal quality to him now, and not just to his voice: Thor can feel the difference that has abruptly formed between Jötunn and  _god_ , and it makes him shiver. “He needs to rebuild, after all… And if not to him, another of the Elders.”

“I never thought you cared so much for my friends,” Thor says lowly. He says it deliberately, intended to catch Loki out. Loki looks at Thor, coldly, distantly, his expression a mask of plain divinity.

“ _Your_  friends,” he whispers. “Perhaps not.” Thor feels the sudden sink of power before he feels anything else, and he lunges, but Loki disappears from the room with a crackle and a  _boom_  of seiðr, the very universe tearing momentarily to accommodate his teleportation. Thor looks to Heimdall, who is sitting very still, his elbows rested on his knees, and his thumbs rested against his lips. His hands are clasped together, and his golden gaze is distantly melancholy.

“Fandral and he married,” Heimdall says quietly. “On Hashtor, some… Eighty years ago.” Thor stares at him.

“Married?” he repeats. “Don’t be  _ridiculous_. Fandral was… I never knew a man so inclined to women.” Heimdall’s expression remains serious. Thor is hyperaware of his own heartbeat in his chest, of the rush of his blood in his veins, and he feels a thousand memories play at once in his head: Fandral and Loki laughing together on the other side of the room, Loki in uncharacteristically high spirits; Fandral and Loki sharing a tent on some quest to Alfheim, and Loki’s complaints teetering off as the days pass; Fandral blowing a kiss to Loki, the motion ridiculous and overdramatic, and Loki laughing instead of showing offence… “You don’t jest?”

“Never,” Heimdall murmurs. “They always kept it secret – such liaisons between men… And your father would never have accepted it. If he didn’t outright decry the marriage, he might have punished Fandral.”

“But  _you_  kept their secret?” Thor demands. “From your king?”

“My Allsight is not to be used to exchange idle gossip,” Heimdall says lowly, and he rises to his feet. “When people would harm the crown, then I shall reveal it to you. But the people of Asgard have a right to their secrecy, particularly when it is vital to their safety.” For the first time, Thor is distinctly aware of how much Heimdall must  _know_ , how awesome his Allsight truly is…

“Where is he?”

“With the Grandmaster,” Heimdall says.

“Will he return?” Thor asks softly. Heimdall shrugs.

Ϟ ❄ ϟ ❄ ϟ ❄ ϟ ❄ ϟ ❄ Ϟ

It is seven years later that Fandral returns.

Coughing and spluttering, he, Volstagg and Hogun land hard in the dirt of the city wherein New Asgard finds her home, on a planet far distant to the realm where once they lived. Volstagg and Hogun are pallid and sickly, each of them unsteady on their feet and requiring a great deal of bedrest.

Fandral is bloody, and bruised, but otherwise hale.

“What happened?” Thor asks. Fandral says nothing. “Where is Loki?” Thor asks. Fandral says nothing. “Is he dead?”

“No,” Fandral whispers. “He isn’t dead. But I fear he will be soon.” Fandral’s voice is hoarse, and he stares at Thor without seeing him. “I told him. I told him that I— that I didn’t care what that mad man should do to us. That I would gladly withstand it with him, than let him bear it alone.” Fandral laughs, softly, bitterly. “He played them against each other. Half a dozen of them, these Elders of the Universe – he tricked them into fighting one another, until they had revived Hogun and Volstagg alongside us, and then he… He used a fragment of the Bifrost. Sent us here, to the land upon which Heimdall stood.”

“And where is he?”

“Amidst them,” Fandral mutters. “Amidst them, angry, and furious that he should have tricked them in such a way. They won’t kill him. They’ll do far worse than that.”

“He loves you,” Thor says, quietly. He doesn’t know what else to say. Fandral at him, long and hard.

“How could he love me,” Fandral whispers, “and doom himself to that?”

 _I don’t know,_  Thor thinks.  _I don’t know_.

Seven years, knowing Loki is the  _Norns_  know where _…_ Thor reaches out, and he ignores it when Fandral flinches, obviously expecting a blow: he drags Fandral to his body, squeezing the other man’s body so tightly that Fandral chokes out a noise against Thor’s chest— And then relaxes.

“I’m sorry,” Fandral whispers. “That we kept it secret. I told him a thousand times… And then when you were banished, and he was so unhinged, I wanted to reveal it then, that at least I might visit him properly, but he refused, and again when he feigned himself as the Allfather.”

“You knew, then?” Thor asks. “The whole two years, you  _knew_?”

“He never could hide himself from me,” Fandral mutters. “Not for long.” Thor feels desperate anger flare within him, and then, simply, painfully: grief. “So here you have me, Thor. Fandral, no longer Dashing… My brothers all dead, my parents gone.”

“Not all of your brothers,” Thor murmurs. Fandral’s eyes widen slightly, and Thor sets his hand gently on Fandral’s neck. Fandral’s neck is so warm, where Loki’s was always slightly cool, and Thor feels his  _heart_  ache. If they could only trace the Elders, if they could only find them… “You have me,” Thor says.

“Thank you.” Fandral sets his hand against Thor’s own, and then says softly, “You think he’ll make it?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time Loki’s cheated death,” Thor murmurs. “We shall hold hope together, you and I.”

“Yes,” Fandral says. “Yes.”

Ϟ ❄ ϟ ❄ ϟ ❄ ϟ ❄ ϟ ❄ Ϟ

On the cusp of death for the thousandth time, pinned between one reality and the next, Loki heaves in a breath. “ _Sister_ ,” he says.

“I’m not your sister,” Hela whispers in the dark. Loki laughs.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says. “There is too much the same between us to be anything less than siblings.” It is Hela’s turn to laugh this time, and she grasps Loki’s chin in her freezing hand, gripping him tightly.

“You have skirted the rules of death, little brother,” Hela whispers, her fingernails digging so hard into his flesh that he feels it  _bleed_.

“Don’t you want revenge?” Loki replies, showing his teeth.

This time, they laugh together. It echoes uncanny and strange throughout the shores of Niflheim, and on a far-distant shore, En Dwi Gast feels a shiver run up his spine.  _Weird_.

**Author's Note:**

> For my fellow DashingFrost shippers, I've now set up a [Fuck Yeah DashingFrost Tumblr](https://fuckyeahdashingfrost.tumblr.com), and I'm running a [DashingFrost week](https://fuckyeahdashingfrost.tumblr.com/post/174693891923/dashingfrost-week-2018) at the end of the month! Check it out! <3
> 
> Feel free to HMU on [Tumblr.](http://dictionarywrites.tumblr.com) Requests are always open.


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